Bill Ford Jr., much like his uncle Henry Ford II and great-grandfather Henry Ford, is ambitious.

All three Ford men with appetites to revolutionize Ford Motor Co.

Henry built the sweeping Highland Park and Rouge plants that transformed manufacturing and the middle class. Henry II hired young engineers to create the 1949 Ford in 19 months, reimagining again the speed of manufacturing. He also led the construction of Detroit's most iconic building, the Renaissance Center.

Now Ford Jr. wants in on the family legacy to transform the company in a time of rapid change in America, Detroit and the automobile. Last week's announcement that Ford would renovate the historic Michigan Central Station in Corktown by 2022 as part of a campus in Detroit focused on developing self-driving vehicles of the future.

"We're making a big bet on our future," Ford Jr. told a crowd of 4,500 gathered outside the monolithic train station Tuesday for Ford's announcement. "What Highland Park, the Rouge and Willow Run were to the American economy in the 20th century, we hope Corktown will be to the American economy in the 21st century. And I know that's a big claim."

It's a particularly big claim because this isn't the first time the 61-year old executive chairman has made bold promises — many of which haven't panned out.

Ford Jr., a self-proclaimed environmentalist and disciple of Buddhism, has spent more than two decades trying to find ways, bold ways, to make Ford a company built on sustainability.

"There is a rising tide of environmental awareness and activism among consumers that is going to swell to undreamed-of heights in the 21st century," Ford Jr. told Automotive News after being named chairman-elect in September 1998. "Smart companies will get ahead of that wave, and ride it to success and prosperity. Those that don't are headed for a wipeout."

Ford spent $2 billion to renovate the Rouge, the 1,200-acre complex of seven factories built in 1916 by his great-grandfather, to become one of the industry's greenest factories in the late 1990s. And in 2000, Ford Jr. promised to boost the fuel economy of its SUVs by 25 percent within five years.

"The Rouge will become the site of an industrial revolution, he says, where cars will be made differently," read the article, which dubbed Ford Jr. "The Buddha of Detroit." "There's talk of making totally recyclable cars. Of parts being compostable or reusable. Of cars being easily assembled, disassembled, then assembled again, like souls being reincarnated."

Much of that plan proved too grandiose, even for Ford Jr. Today, Ford remains off the Corporate Knights Top 100 most sustainable companies list. BMW, Honda, Daimler, Nissan and Renault made the list in 2018.

It also fell short of its five-year MPG improvement goal as well. The 2000 eight-cylinder Ford Explorer achieved a combined 15 miles per gallon. The same 2005 model actually dropped to a combined 14 mpg.

So Ford Jr. has turned his Zen-like world view toward the dilapidated train depot in Detroit with the same hopes his uncle brought to the city. The Ford-financed $500 million build-out of the seven-tower Renaissance Center in the mid-1970s was designed to revitalize the economy of Detroit, much like Ford Jr. intends with the train depot.

To that end, the RenCen was a success. The first year of its opening in 1976 reportedly spurred $1 billion in additional economic activity to Detroit. It brought needed restaurants and convention activity to the city — the building famously hosted Ronald Reagan during the 1980 Republican National Convention.

While a skyline landmark for the city, it's a point of contention for Ford. The city's largest automaker, General Motors Co., acquired the RenCen in 1996, becoming Ford's landlord. Ford, which occupied an entire tower in the complex at the time, moved its 2,500 workers at the RenCen back to Dearborn just months later.

But it's the company's founder, Henry, who hit the pinnacle of Ford ambition — this time in the Amazon River basin in Brazil. In the 1920s, Henry led the automaker to acquire a 5,625-square-mile tract of land on the Tapajos River from the Brazilian government. The land, later called Boa Vista, would become Fordlandia, a fabricated industrial town to grow and cultivate heveabrasiliensis, otherwise known as rubber plants, to supply Ford with tires cheaply. Ford wanted to sidestep British control of Sri Lankan rubber production.

Henry's quest was, publicly, not just about vertically integrating its operations as a cost-savings measure. Henry viewed the quest to industrialize the Amazon Rain Forest as altruistic, paralleling his great-grandson's depot vision.

"We are not going to South America to make money, but to help develop that wonderful and fertile land," Henry said in a May 1928 article published in The Magazine of Business. "We'll train the Brazilians and they'll work as well as any others."

But Henry's vision didn't go as planned. The cargo vessels couldn't reach the land during the dry season, Brazilian workers mutinied due to food shortages and malaria outbreaks crippled Ford's American workers. And most importantly, the rubber trees Ford planted were besieged by disease and never produced the copious amounts of latex needed to manufacture tires.

Henry eventually moved his Brazilian plant to another location on the property in 1934, with similar results. After nearly two decades of trying to tame and industrialize the rain forest, Henry's rubber haven turned obsolete when synthetic rubber came into fashion for auto tires in 1945. Ford failed to produce a single tire from the operation, and Henry II, taking over for his sick grandfather, sold the Brazilian operations back to the government for a loss of more than $210 million in today's dollars.

Today Ford Jr. is chasing the competitive landscape of mobility, led by the growth of autonomous cars. Ford is being outpaced by its crosstown competitor GM in this space. GM has convinced its shareholders that its big-selling products such as the Chevy Silverado can supplement the costs of big investments in electric- and autonomous-vehicles. GM overtook Silicon Valley rival Tesla by launching its EV Chevy Bolt in nine months, to wide praise from investors and car testers. It's also spent billions on AV technology, such as acquiring AV tech startup Cruise Automation for more than $1 billion in 2016.

Meanwhile, Ford parted ways with its previous CEO Mark Fields last year in favor of outsider Jim Hackett, who speaks of mobility and the future of automotive with the fervor of a Carmelite monk. Ford Jr. and Hackett speak often of the company's future, but Wall Street has yet to listen.

Ford's shares are down nearly 6 percent over the past 12 months. Shares of GM are up more than 19 percent over the same period.

Meanwhile, the future isn't mapped out. The success or failure of autonomous vehicles remains a mystery. Ford didn't predict synthetic rubber and can't predict the adoption of driverless cars or other mobility options yet undreamt of. The world has a funny way of proving us all wrong.

So let's hope Ford Jr. gets it right like his great-grandfather did with the Rouge. Michigan Central Station is no place for another Fordlandia.